Category: Historical (born before 1900)

Jane Addams
Jane Addams


Jane Addams was a settlement social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace. She was the second woman and the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931, and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. Addams was born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois. Her father, John Addams, was a founding member of the Illinois Republican Party and served as an Illinois State Senator from 1855 to 1870. He was friends […]
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony


Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. She was brought up in a Quaker family with long activist traditions. After teaching for fifteen years, she became active in temperance. Because she was a woman, she was not allowed to speak at temperance rallies. This experience, and her acquaintance with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led her to join the women's rights movement in 1852. Soon after she dedicated her life to women's suffrage. After they moved to Rochester in 1845, members of the Anthony family were active […]
Mary Bethune
Mary M Bethune


Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was born July 10, 1875, near Mayesville, South Carolina, the 15th of 17 children. Scholarships enabled her to attend Scotia Seminary and then Moody Bible Institute. Turned down when she applied to go to Africa as a missionary, Bethune returned to the South. She met and married Albertus Bethune, and began to teach school. In Daytona, Florida, in 1904, Bethune scraped together $1.50 to begin a school with just five pupils. She called it the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. A gifted […]
Empress Catherine the Great
Catherine the Great


Catherine II was the empress of Russia from December 25, 1761, until her death on November 17, 1796. Known as Catherine the Great, she was the longest reining empress of Russia. Catherine’s greatest accomplishments include establishing educational reform, championing the arts, and extending Russia’s borders in the largest territorial gain since Ivan the Terrible. Catherine was born on May 2, 1729. Her birth name was Sophie Friederike Auguste, and grew up in Stettin, Poland as a minor German princess. Upon request of the Russian Empress, Elizabeth, Sophie traveled to Russia […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt


Carrie Lane Chapman Catt—an Iowa State University alumna who devoted most of her life to the expansion of women's rights around the world as well as international peace—is recognized as one of the key leaders of the American women's suffrage movement. Her superb oratory and organizational skills led to ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote in August 1920. Catt was born on January 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wis., the second of three children of Lucius and Maria (Clinton) Lane. In 1866, […]
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart


Amelia Mary Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was also affiliated with the National Woman's Party and was an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas. Due to her father's occupation as a legal representative for various railroads, the family moved frequently during her childhood, living at times in Kansas City, Des Moines, St. Paul, and Chicago. Earhart graduated from Chicago's Hyde Park High School in June 1915. Earhart entered Ogontz School near Philadelphia in 1916. The […]
Crystal Eastman
Crystal Eastman


Crystal Catherine Eastman was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She was a leader in the women's suffrage movement, co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. Eastman was born on June 25, 1881, in Marlborough, Massachusetts. She graduated from Vassar College in 1903, received an M.A. in sociology from Columbia University in 1904, and received a law degree from New York University Law School in 1907. Her first job was researching labor conditions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the […]
Queen Elizabeth I
Queen Elizabeth I


Elizabeth I was queen of England and Ireland from November 17, 1558, until her death on March 24, 1603. Known as the Virgin Queen or Good Queen Bess, she was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth was born September 7, 1533, the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. After Anne's execution two and a half years after Elizabeth's birth, the marriage was annulled and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. After the death of Henry VIII in 1547, Elizabeth's younger half-brother, Edward VI, ruled […]
Rebecca Felton
Rebecca L Felton


Rebecca Latimer Felton, a prominent suffragist and temperance advocate but also a white supremacist and an advocate of segregation and lynching, was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, as a senator for Georgia. Felton was born on June 10, 1835. She graduated at the top of her class from Madison Female College in 1852. In 1953, she married William H. Felton, a state legislator, physician, Methodist minister and planter. She began her political career as his campaign manager, congressional secretary and aide. After her husband's death […]
Elizabeth Flynn
Elizabeth G Flynn


Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born on August 7, 1890, in Concord, New Hampshire. She was born into a radical, activist family; her father was a socialist and her mother was a feminist. She grew up in poor, industrial New England towns before her family settled in the blue-collar Bronx section of New York City. Flynn became active in socialist groups and gave her first public speech at the age of sixteen. As a result of her involvement in political affairs, she was expelled from her high school in 1907. Her […]